1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an e-mail apparatus which is inputted an e-mail address to designate an e-mail destination, the e-mail address being composed of a character string such as alphabets, and numerals, and more particularly to an e-mail apparatus, which can reduce the number of characters to be input by an operator.
2. Description of the Related Art
Internet facsimile apparatuses are communication apparatuses that make possible to perform e-mail communications based on conventional facsimile apparatuses. In the Internet facsimile apparatuses, similar to the conventional facsimile apparatuses, a telephone number and an e-mail address are input from a operation panel. The operation panel comprises keys such as keys of a 10-button keypad, a start key, a stop key, a one-touch key, etc such that the operation panel is configured to be suitable for an input operation of numerals typified by the input operation of a telephone number.
However, in the operation panel provided in the conventional facsimile apparatus, alphabet keys are not arranged. For this reason, there is considered a character inputting method in which a plurality of alphabets is allocated to one 10-button keypad to select alphabets in accordance with the number of depression times for keys of the 10-button keypad (U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,464).
Such character inputting method is largely inferior to a keyboard in operability for inputting the character string typified by the e-mail address.
An object of the present invention is to provide an e-mail apparatus, which can easily input an e-mail address and which has a good usability.
An address editing apparatus of the present invention divides an e-mail address of a received e-mail at a predetermined segment and stores data of the divided e-mail address.
According to the present invention, e-mail address data can be divided into a top domain name, a sub-domain name, a user name, etc., and edited, and the use of this division makes it possible to facilitate an input of e-mail address at an input time.
More specifically, the e-mail address is divided into at least the user name and the domain name, and at least the domain name is stored.
Also, the e-mail address is divided into a top domain name and a sub-domain name, and they are stored distinguishably. This allows the e-mail address to be more specifically edited. Also, this makes it possible to further facilitate the input operation of e-mail address and to realize the input operation with general versatility.
The e-mail apparatus of the present invention stores address data of an e-mail address in a state that a top domain name and a sub-domain name are distinguished from each other. At an address input time, the top domain name and the sub-domain name stored in the memory are input not directly but selectively, and e-mail transmission is carried out with respect to the input address.
According to the e-mail apparatus, the use of data of the divided and entered e-mail address facilities the input of the e-mail address. Also, occurrence of an erroneous input can be prevented so as to realize an apparatus having good usability.
Also, the e-mail apparatus of the present invention comprises a display for displaying an e-mail address to be input and buttons, which are arranged in the vicinity of the display to correspond to the top domain name, which is input unit, and the sub-domain name, for carrying out an address decision.
By the above-mentioned configuration, since e-mail address data to be selected and buttons to operate e-mail address data are associated with each other, the input operation can be facilitated.
Also, the address editing apparatus of the present invention extracts an e-mail address of the received e-mail and divides the extracted e-mail address into an upper hierarchical domain name and a lower hierarchical domain name. The divided upper hierarchical domain name is entered, and the lower hierarchical domain name is entered and managed to be associated with the upper hierarchical domain name.
According to the present invention, since the upper hierarchical domain name and the upper hierarchical domain name are managed to be associated with each other, this makes it possible to efficiently display the address, which an operator needs.